Hegel's Critique of The Common Logic

From an Ontological Point of View: Hegel's Critique of the Common Logic
Author(s): Robert Hanna

Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Dec., 1986), pp. 305-338
Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.
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FROM AN ONTOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW: HEGEL'S
CRITIQUE OF THE COMMON LOGIC
ROBERT HANNA
JjLegel'S logic, as developed both in the Science of Logic1 and in

the Encyclopedia Logic,2 can be understood only as a criticism of
what he calls the "common logic" (EL, 36/81) and also sometimes
"formal logic" or "ordinary logic." Common logic is perhaps best
exemplified by Kant's Logic?: it deals with the formal conditions of
truth in judgments and includes the theory of the syllogism and
identity.4 Hegel's logic, as an ontological logic (EL, 36/81), mani
1 G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (London: George

Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1969); Wissenschaft der Logik I und II, Theorie Wer
kausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969), B?nden 5 und 6.
All subsequent references to the Science of Logic within the text of the
essay are taken from these editions, signified by the abbreviation 'SL' and
two page numbers?the first referring to the English edition, the second
referring to the German edition by respective volume?enclosed in paren
theses.
2 G. W. F. Hegel, Logic: Being Part One of the Encyclopedia of the
Philosophical Sciences, trans. W. Wallace (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press,
1975); Enzyklop?die der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse;
Erster Teil: Die Wissenschaft der Logik, Theorie Werkausgabe (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), Band 8. All subsequent references to
the Encyclopedia Logic within the text of the essay are taken from these
editions, signified by the abbreviation 'EL' and two page-numbers?the
first referring to the English edition, the second referring to the German
edition?enclosed in parentheses.
31. Kant, Logic, trans. R. S. Hartman and W. Schwarz (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1974); Logik, Theorie Werkausgabe (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1958), Band 6. All subsequent references within
the text of the essay to Kant's Logic are taken from these editions, signified
by the abbreviation 'KU and two page-numbers?the first referring to the
English edition, the second referring to the German edition?enclosed in
parentheses.
4 Common logic in this Kantian sense is of course by no means identical
with modern "elementary logic"?which presupposes the great technical
and theoretical advances introduced by Frege, Whitehead, Russell, Tarski,
and others. An excellent example of modern elementary logic is Benson
Mates's Elementary Logic, second edition (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1972).
Review of Metaphysics 40 (December 1986): 305-338. Copyright ? 1986 by the Review of

Metaphysics
306 ROBERT HANNA
festly goes far beyond the scope of the common logic; it is by no

means either a bare denial or even a revision of common logic. He
gel's logic in fact preserves the entire edifice of common logic while
still using the critique of the latter as a motivation for its own self
development towards a more comprehensive and radically new sense
of logic. Many of the misunderstandings of Hegel's logic are based
precisely on confusions concerning the equally critical and conser
vative character of Hegel's treatment of the common logic. An ex
plication of Hegel's unique ontological point of view should therefore
go some distance towards removing the misunderstandings, and by
implication, begin to give a proper sense of what Hegel's logic
really is.
Logic?as common logic?is an ontologically undeveloped and

naive science for Hegel. He points out that it has lagged behind
"the higher standpoint reached by spirit in its awareness of itself"
(SL, 25/1:13). In particular, the common logic has not been subjected
to the same kind of critique as that levelled at traditional meta
physics by Kant. But in view of the importance of the common logic
for the Kantian transcendental metaphysics, such a critique is de
manded. Hegel fully agrees with Kant that an ontological logic is
possible, but disagrees about the status of the common logic with
respect to the higher logic. Hegel makes a crucial distinction be
tween the activity of "Understanding" insofar as it determines or
merely fixes the characteristics of things, and the "Reason" insofar
as it is dialectical, dynamic, and speculative (SL, 28/1:16-17; EL,
113-22/168-79). For Hegel, the Understanding and the Reason are
not merely cognitive faculties, but determine ontological structures.
The common logic clearly belongs to the activities of the Under
standing (EL, 255/344-45), while Hegel's logic belongs to the ac
tivities of Reason. This means that the common logic and Hegel's
logic each has an "ontological bias" towards Understanding and
Reason, respectively, quite independently of its explicit recognition
of this bias.
Hegel then articulates a basic contrast between Kant's trans
formation of the common logic of the Understanding (which Kant
HEGEL'S CRITIQUE OF THE COMMON LOGIC 307
calls "analytic general logic")5 into a "transcendental logic," and

Hegel's own critique and sublation of the common logic in the service
of his logic of Reason (EL, 65-94/113-47). The important difference
between Kant and Hegel in this regard is that Kant did not see the
common logic as ontologically naive and undeveloped, but rather as
a well-grounded, necessary propaedeutic and foundation of his tran
scendental logic; by contrast, Hegel is quite clear that it is only by
means of a critique of the common logic that the transition to the
higher logic can occur. For the common logic has an unrecognized
ontological bias towards the Understanding which must be removed
before a logic of the Reason is possible. Therefore, insofar as Kant
has not provided a critique of the common logic, his transcendental
logic will be itself ontologically naive and undeveloped in direct pro
portion as it rests on the structures of the mere Understanding.
This means that any kind of Kantian "metaphysical deduction of
the categories" whereby the forms of common logic are translated
into forms of "all possible experience," is decisively rejected
by Hegel.6
Thus Hegel sees his logic as a "completely fresh start" (SL, 27/
1:16) in philosophical logic, and therefore as a distinct movement
beyond anything broached in the common logic. Philosophy does
not so much borrow from common logic, as it consists in a free
5 I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. K. Smith (London: Mac

millan and Co. Ltd., 1964), pp. 92-95, 97-99.
6 There is a strong analogy between Kant's transformation of the
common logic of his time into a transcendental logic, and the modern de
velopment of the common logic of its time (i.e., elementary logic) into a
logic with at least implicit ontological import. Wittgenstein's Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, Russell's early philosophy of "logical atomism," Car
nap's The Logical Structure of the World, and Kripke's Naming and Necessity
all reveal a strong tendency to transfer modern logical concepts onto a
metaphysical or at least an ontological footing. Hegel's answer to this,
based on his criticism of Kant, would be that such a transference is not
sufficiently critical of the ontological biases and presuppositions of modern
symbolic logic. I noted in note 4 that Kant's common logic and our ele
mentary logic differed greatly in respect of technical and theoretical ad
vances. But advances in technique or logical theory are not necessarily
advances in ontological sophistication. Thus it seems that a suitably up
dated version of Hegel's critique of the common logic of his day could be
turned mutatis mutandis upon the common logic of our time, and thereby
have a great impact upon recent uses of logical concepts for ontological
purposes.
308 ROBERT HANNA
development of the content provided for it by common logic. We

might then say that Hegel holds the common logic to provide a
wealth of material in which certain ontological structures lie dor
mant. These structures must be worked up from a different per
spective than that which produced the wealth of material in the
first place. In short, Hegel's philosophical use of common logic is
a higher-order activity than the common-logical activity, and does
not therefore by any means compete with the common logic at its
own level. Hegel's higher-order comments about the common logic
are ontological remarks or recommendations, not common-logical re
marks or recommendations.
This helps to make it understandable how Hegel can at once
say that common logic is to be viewed as an "extremely important
source [for Hegel's own logic], indeed as a necessary condition and
as a presupposition to be gratefully acknowledged" (SL, 31/1:19),
and yet also say that "what it offers is only here and there a meagre
shed or a disordered heap of bones" (SL, 31/1:19). Indeed, Hegel
even goes beyond the metaphor of common logic as a heap of bones
to say:
the conceptions on which the [common] Notion of logic has rested

hitherto have in part already been discarded, and for the rest, it is
time that they disappeared entirely and that this science were grasped
from a higher standpoint and received a completely changed shape.
(SL, 44/1:36)
It is comments like these, I am sure, which have always misled in

terpreters of Hegel's logic. The apparent contradiction between
common logic as a "necessary condition" and as a "disordered heap
of bones," and again between common logic as a "presupposition to
be gratefully acknowledged" and as something which should "dis
appear entirely" makes it seem that Hegel is either logically dense
or seriously confused, or both. But this apparent contradiction can
be dissolved simply by taking very seriously the "higher standpoint"
of which Hegel speaks.
By establishing his own logic as a development beyond the com
mon logic, and as a higher-order activity which consists in the "sys
tem of pure reason, as the realm of pure thought" (SL, 50/1:44),
Hegel is saying that the common logic can be viewed from two quite
distinct perspectives. Viewed on its own terms and at its own level,
common logic is simply a discipline among or "alongside" the other
scientific disciplines (SL, 58/1:54). As such its procedures and no

tions have a certain integrity and efficacy which cannot be denied.
As Hegel puts it:
the purpose of the science [of common logic] is to become acquainted

with the procedures of finite thought: and, if it is adapted to its pre
supposed object, the science is entitled to be styled correct.
(EL, 22/75)
But viewed from a higher viewpoint, namely that of ontology, the

common logic can be seen to rest on certain enabling presuppositions
which are also at the same time crippling limitations from an on
tological point of view. These limitations prevent the common logic
from passing directly over into philosophical significance: "they bar
the entrance to philosophy [and must] be discarded at its portals"
(SL, 45/1:38). Only a transformation or "reconstruction" (SL,
52/1:46) of the conceptions of the common logic by means of a thor
ough critique of it, can provide the basis of the transition from com
mon logic to Hegelian logic. Thus in order to become adequately
ontological or properly philosophical the common logic must "dis
appear." Again, this does not mean that Hegel is denying the ef
ficacy and efficiency of common logic at its own level. He is denying
only the implicit and therefore uncriticized claim of common logic
to ontological adequacy.
It will soon be necessary to look more closely at some details of
Hegel's critique and transformation of the common logic. As re
gards the transformatory aspect, it is worth noticing from the start
that Hegel's general procedure is to take a certain concept from the
common logic, criticize it, and then to extend the meaning of the
term over a much wider field which includes the initial meaning but
is by no means reducible to it. It is precisely the misunderstanding
of this procedure of Hegel's which has led to such claims as that
Hegel "denies" the principle of non-contradiction, the law of identity,
etc. The misunderstanding stems mainly from the idea that the
given term?say, 'contradiction'?is being extended merely by taking
the initial meaning as a model and then illegitimately widening the
scope of its application. This is to get Hegel's approach quite back
wards. To use rhetorical terminology, Hegel's treatment of the
meaning of his logical terms is m?tonymie and not analogical. When
Hegel uses a term like 'contradiction' in his sense, it is because he
has already shown that the original meaning of the term in the
310 ROBERT HANNA
discourse of common logic was an abstract, partial, and specifically

limited use of a much wider notion which can be named by the same
word. In short, the narrow or "partial" use of the word gets its
significance only because it is a narrowing of or participation in a
much broader and more concrete notion which has been, as it were,
"forgotten" in the ordinary business of common logic.
It can be seen here that Hegel's critique and transformation of
the common logic has something in common with Heidegger's ac
count of logic.7 In a manner similar to Heidegger, Hegel is well
aware that the common logic is a "derivative" or "founded" phe
nomenon, in the Hegelian sense that its ontological status and the
meaning of its terms consist in the narrowing and limitation of the
implicit absolute structures of the Notion (Begriff) and the Idea.
As Hegel puts it: "the logic of mere Understanding is involved in
Speculative logic, and can at will be elicited from it, by the simple
process of omitting the dialectical and 'reasonable' element" (EL,
120/177). Hence Hegel's own usages of the common-logical terms
should not be regarded as extensions in the sense of merely analog
ically "widening" the use of a term, but as extensions which refer
metonymically "back into" the more complete original sense of the
term?a sense which is recoverable from the standpoint of Reason
but not from the standpoint of Understanding. Thus Hegel cannot
be accused of twisting conceptions of common logic to his own pur
poses; he is rather re-situating the notions in their proper sphere.
From the ontological-philosophical (though not of course from the
common-logical) perspective, it is precisely the common-logical uses
of such terms as 'contradiction' which are "twisted" owing to their
abstract partiality.
In order to get a fuller sense of Hegel's critique of common
logic, I shall focus on his criticism and transformation (or re-situ
ation) of the common-logical doctrines of (1) judgment, (2) syllogism,
(3) contradiction. (As regards Hegel's architectonic in the two Log
7 Heidegger's ontological account of logic may be found mainly in Being

and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper and
Row, 1962), pp. 195-203; Ba^ic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. A. Hof t
stadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 177-224; Logik:
die Frage nach der Wahrheit (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1976);
and Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, trans. M. Heim (Bloomington: In
diana University Press, 1984).
ics, the treatment of judgment and syllogism both fall under the
logic of the Notion or Concept, in the Subjective Logic; and the
treatment of contradiction falls under the logic of essence, in the
Objective Logic. So far as I can determine, the relative positions
of these topics in Hegel's overall logical system have no special sig
nificance for my account.)
II
It seems necessary to begin with Hegel's critique of the common

logical doctrine of the judgment for two reasons. First, the common
logic is manifestly a logic of judgments in the sense that all of its
logical operations begin and end with judgments. Hence for Hegel
to criticize the common-logical doctrine of judgment is to get at the
basic "atomic parts" of the common logic. Secondly, the judgment
is for the common logic the locus of truth, or as we would now say,
the "truth-bearer." Both the common-logician and Hegel himself
would agree that "truth" is the central concern of all logic, be it
common logic or Hegelian logic. For example, Kant in his Logic
writes that logic is "rightly called the logic of truth" (KL, 18/438).
Hegel too asserts that "truth is the object of logic" (EL, 26/68). But
where Hegel and the common logician will disagree is over just
"where" the locus of truth lies; that is, over just what deserves to
be called the ontologically genuine "truth-bearer." In order to mo
tivate his new conception, therefore, Hegel will have to criticize the
traditional conception, which is to say that he will criticize the com
mon-logical doctrine of judgment.
Thus Hegel in fact begins his own "critique of judgment" by
questioning the truth-bearing capacity of the common-logical judg
ment. In the context of a discussion of metaphysical judgments
such as 'The Soul is simple', Hegel raises a more profound problem
by pointing out that "nobody asked whether such predicates had
any intrinsic and independent truth, or if the prepositional form
could be a form of truth" (EL, 48/94; emphasis added). In short,
Hegel proposes to circumvent the question of whether a given judg
ment is "true" or not by raising the more primordial question of
whether any judgment can be "true" in any proper sense of the
term. This is not meant as a form of logical scepticism by Hegel,
but rather as a question about the possibility of an ontological lim
312 ROBERT HANNA
itation which is "built into" judgment merely owing to its "propo

sitional form."
Now by "propositional form" in this context Hegel also means
the "form of the judgment," as he himself points out (EL, 51/98).
Hegel distinguishes between "propositions" and "judgments" by
saying that whereas the former have a merely grammatical existence
with correct syntactical form, the latter respond to some actual
question about the world and reach out into the world in their ref
erence (SL, 626/11:305). It is worth making out this difference not
only because it anticipates Austin's distinction between "sentences"
and "statements,"8 but so that it may be seen that Hegel is address
ing his remarks primarily not to some imaginary construct or ab
stract entity but rather to a situated common-logical phenomenon.9
The common-logical judgment, as Hegel analyzes it, has both
what can be called a "structural" and an "epistemic" component.
These two components are nicely exemplified by Kant's doctrine of
judgment. In his "Mistaken Subtility of the Four Syllogistic Fig
ures," Kant writes:
Judgment is the comparison of a thing with some mark [or attribute].

The thing itself is the Subject, the mark [or attribute] is the predicate.
The comparison is expressed by the word 'is' which when used alone
indicates that the predicate is a mark [or attribute] of the subject.10
This brings forward the "structural" element of the common-logical

doctrine of judgment. The judgment is constituted by the linkage
of a subject-thing to a predicate-thing by means of the 'is' or copula.
The predicate-thing or "attribute" is supposed to "determine" the
subject-thing by its application to it.
8 J. L. Austin, "Truth," in Philosophical Papers (Oxford: At the Clar

endon Press, 1970), pp. 119-21.
9 Hegel's awareness that every judgment in logic belongs to an actual
speech situation comports well with Husserl's analysis of logical acts in
Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1970). This comparison brings forward the conspicuous absence of
the human voice in modern symbolic logic. Of course we are all aware of
the theoretical benefits of ridding logic of "psychologism." But what are
the ontological consequences of this development? Does this render modern
elementary logic less or more ontologically naive than Kant's common logic?
101. Kant, "The Mistaken Subtility of the Four Syllogistic Figures,"
in Kant's Introduction to Logic, trans. T. K. Abbott (New York: Philosophical
Library Inc., 1963), p. 79.
Hegel points out in this regard that the etymology of 'Urteil'

('judgment') implies an "original partition" (EL, 231/316). Hegel
takes this to mean that the entity denoted by the subject-term of
the judgment is partitioned or ruptured in its living concreteness
by the application of the predicate to it. The thing is "ruptured"
because a certain feature or aspect of the thing is thereby take to
characterize the whole thing. The thing is narrowed down in the
judgment to a specific feature, as if it were being viewed out of the
wrong end of a telescope. As Hegel notes:
Attribution is no more than an external reflection about the object:

the predicates by which the object is to be determined are supplied
from the resources of picture thought and are applied in a mechanical
way. (EL, 50/96)
What Hegel means by "external reflection" is the idea that a certain

apparent feature of the object is elicited by the judgment, and is
then hypostatized into a separate thing: the predicate. This hy
postatized predicate is then applied to the thing as if it were simply
another thing "over against" the original object. The "picture
thought" which supplies the predicate is the activity of imagination
governed by the Understanding. This imagination "creates" pred
icates by taking concrete, embedded aspects of the thing and rep
resenting them as distinct things on their own. Hence the aspec
tuality (or relationality) of the thing is, as predicate, transformed
into an "attribute" or "mark." The application of this predicative
thing back to the original thing is "mechanical" because the judg
ment is as it were rebuilding the object by means of the adhesive
copula after having ruptured it in its primordial concreteness?or
as Hegel would say, in its Notion.
By contrast, for Hegel an adequate characterization of the object
"must characterize its own self and not derive its predicates from
without" (EL, 50/96). This does not mean that a totality of predi
cates should be listed for the object through "all possible" judgments
about it. The thing is not a maximally large class of predicates.
Hegel says that "even supposing we follow the method of predicating,
the mind cannot help feeling that predicates of this sort fail to ex
haust the object" (EL, 50/96). This means that in principle the
judgment?even an infinite number of them?will not be able to
characterize the object adequately. And this is not because?as in
Husserl?we simply cannot grasp the "inexhaustible" object in all
314 ROBERT HANNA
its "profiles." Rather it is because there is an ontological difference

between an adequate characterization of the object and any predic
ative partition of it. The essential nature of the object simply cannot
be grasped by positing any single predicative feature or even an
infinite number of them.
Thus the difficulty with common-logical judgment lies not in
the completeness or incompleteness of a list of possible judgments
about a given object, but in the ontological bias of the judgmental
form itself. Hegel writes:
The propositional form (and for proposition it would be more correct

to substitute judgment) is not suited to express the concrete?and the
true is always concrete?or the speculative. (EL, 51/98)
The judgment is not suited to express the concrete because the

(propositional) form of judgment itself contains an internal oppo
sition or "contradiction" in the Hegelian sense (see section IV below).
The judgment sets out to characterize a subject by means of a pred
icate. Hence implicitly the subject is taken to be a source or ground
of this predicate. As Hegel puts it:
The predicate, as the phrase is, inheres in the subject. Further, as

the subject is in general and immediately concrete, the specific con
notation of the predicate is only one of the numerous characters of
the subject. Thus the subject is ampler and wider than the predicate.
(EL, 234/320)
The subject is a source or ground of the predicate in the sense that

the predicate by the structural intention of the judgment, is taken
to "inhere" in the subject along with many other predicates. Thus
the predicate must refer back to the subject and "belong" to it as a
part belongs to a whole.
Yet as soon as the predication is carried out, the concreteness
of the subject-whole passes over into the abstractness of the pred
icate. The concreteness of the subject is as it were "absorbed" by
the predicate. So, in the movement from 'The rose is . . .'to 'The
rose is red9, we can see the concreteness of the subject being sub
ordinated to the universal predicate '. . . is red'. Thus
the predicate as universal is self-subsistent, and indifferent whether

this subject is or not. The predicate outflanks the subject, subsuming
it under itself: and hence on its side is wider than the subject. (EL,
234/321)
In this way, the concrete whole of the subject becomes a particular

as regards the abstract whole of the predicate. Hegel is clearly
exploiting a crucial ambiguity here in the ontology of parts and
wholes?an ambiguity which the common logic has not recognized?
between concrete wholes or "individuals" and abstract wholes or
"universals." The very subject/predicate form of the judgment em
bodies this ontological ambiguity insofar as it (1) denotes in the
subject-ter m a concrete whole or individual in which it appears that
the predicate must "inhere"; (2) denotes in the predicate-term an
abstract whole or universal, under which it appears that the indi
vidual subject must be subsumed. In short, to use spatial metaphors,
the "in which" of attributive inherence conflicts with the "under
which" of predicative subsumption. Or to put it another way: the
individuality of the subject conflicts with its bare particularity with
respect to the predicate. As a form, therefore, the judgment really
cannot give an adequate characterization of the thing in its con
creteness or indeed of the predicate in its abstract universality.
Having diagnosed the structural flaw in common-logical judg
ment, Hegel is able then to give a broader, ontological character
ization of the difficulty by noting that the judgment in itself ex
presses what he calls the "determinate being or otherness of the
Notion which has not yet restored itself to the unity whereby it is
as Notion" (SL, 627/11:306). This is an example of what I called
Hegel's "re-situation" of common-logical notions. The Notion, for
Hegel, is the concrete synthetic unity of universal and particular,
whole and part, genus and individual. As John Smith puts it:
What Hegel called the Concept [or Notion] is not the abstraction of a
feature common to many particulars, but a principle of order, structure
and organization which specifies itself by determining the elements
of the system it organizes.11
With respect to judgment in particular, the Notion is the implicit,

higher-order unity which makes it possible for the common-logical
judgment to display itself as limited and internally oppositional in
the first place. This aspect of Hegel's treatment of the judgment
11 John Smith, "The Logic of Hegel Revisited: A Review of Errol E.

Harris, An Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel, " British Journal for the
Philosophy of Science, forthcoming.
316 ROBERT HANNA
should not be taken to be a denial or discrediting of judgment, but

only a diagnosis of its essential difficulties from an ontological point
of view. To put it differently: the judgment of common logic is not
logically flawed on its own terms; rather it is ontologically flawed
insofar as it cannot adequately articulate the things of which it
treats. The judgment is in fact the representative of the dirempted
Notion, or the Notion as it shows itself in its onesidedness or oth
erness prior to the achievement of its own ultimate unity as Idea.
Thus the judgment is seen by Hegel to be a kind of lower-order
version of the Notion in its contradictory concreteness in much the
same way that a two-dimensional photograph of a person is an in
herently limited version of the three-dimensional living person who
himself is incomplete in the sense that he has "many miles to go
before he sleeps."
Owing to this ontologically limited, "contradictory" character
of the judgment in its very form, it follows that for Hegel "every
judgment is by its form one-sided and to that extent, false" (EL,
51/98). To the common-logician this statement would seem to be a
perfect example of Hegelian confusion and obfuscation. "Is he say
ing that even true judgments are false? How absurd!" But such a
response would be based on a misunderstanding of Hegel's ontolog
ical analysis. To disentangle this misunderstanding, we must talk
about the "epistemic" component of judgment mentioned above. In
his Logic, Kant writes:
A judgment is a presentation {Vorstellung] of the unity of the con

sciousness of several presentations, or the presentation of their re
lation so far as they make up one concept. (KL, 106/531)
Thus Kant is saying that a judgment is a representation of the unity

of several representations. In the context of Kant's theory of
knowledge, this means that a judgment is the holding-together of
an intuitive representation of a thing-in-itself and an empirical con
cept. The thing-in-itself is beyond all possible experience and is
given only representationally in intuition as an object of sense-per
ception. The empirical concept is the synthetic act of the under
standing in conjunction with the imagination. The upshot is that,
as Hegel notes,
one's first impression about the judgment is the independence of the
two extremes, the subject and the predicate. The former we take to
be a thing or term per se, and the predicate a general term outside
the said subject and somewhere in our heads. (EL, 231/316)
In short, then, a certain epistemic view is implied by the common

logical judgment, a view in which the judgment seeks to apply a
conceptual, "internal" predicate to a perceptual "external" subject.
This implicit epistemology of the judgment carries along with
it a certain doctrine of truth. This is the doctrine of truth as
"agreement" or "correspondence." Kant writes: "truth, one says,
consists in the agreement of cognition with the object" (KL, 55/
476). To put this formulation into the terminology of the present
context, the truth of judgment consists in the successful application
of the conceptual predicate to the perceptual subject. The "success"
of the application is held to consist in some sort of mapping or
matching of the conceptual predicate to the thing. It is absolutely
crucial to note that Hegel's criticism of the truth of judgment does
not amount to an attack upon the correspondence theory of truth.
Instead, Hegel points out that such a view of judgmental truth relies
upon a rather controversial doctrine of the relationship of thought
and its object:
The object is regarded as something complete and finished on its own

account, something which can entirely dispense with thought for its
actuality, while thought on the other hand is regarded as defective
because it has to complete itself with a material and moreover, as a
pliable indeterminate form, has to adapt itself to its material. Truth
is [for the common logic] the agreement of thought with the object,
and in order to bring about this agreement?for it does not exist on
its own account?thinking is supposed to adapt and accommodate itself
to the object. (SL, 44/1:37)
The doctrine is "controversial" for Hegel not because it implies the

falsity of the correspondence theory of truth, but because ontolog
ically it sets two things apart?thought and its object?which for
Hegel are never ontologically dichotomous. Hegel writes that the
logic of understanding . . . believes thought to be a mere subjective

and formal activity, and the objective fact, which confronts thought,
to have a separate and permanent being. But this dualism is a half
truth: and there is a want of intelligence in the procedure which at
once accepts, without inquiring into their origin, the categories of
subjectivity and objectivity. (EL, 255/345)
For Hegel, thought is thought of objects, and objects become "ob

jective" only for thought. Hence to claim that truth lies in the
"agreement" or "correspondence" of thought and its object is to
presuppose that they are apart in the first place, and thereby to say
something which is ontologically naive or "wanting intelligence"?
318 ROBERT HANNA
quite independently of any epistemic difficulties which a "corre

spondence-theory of truth" might have.
Indeed, Hegel's treatment of the ontological naivete of judg
mental truth, far from denying the correspondence-theory, in fact
preserves it. Hegel does this by distinguishing between "truth"
(Wahrheit) and "correctness" (Richtigkeit). Hegel writes:
In common life the terms truth and correctness are often treated as
synonymous: we speak of the truth of a content, when we are only
thinking of its correctness. Correctness, generally speaking, concerns
only the formal coincidence between our conception and its content,
whatever the constitution of this content may be. Truth, on the con
trary, lies in the coincidence of the object with itself, that is, with its
notion. (EL, 231/323)
Several things must be said about this. First, it is clear that the
distinction between truth and correctness enables Hegel to say that
all judgments are "false" despite the fact that many of them may
be "correct." They are "false" because they rely upon a view of
thought and its object which is one-sided and ontologically inade
quate. Secondly, however, the correctness or incorrectness of judg
ments is preserved by Hegel as features of judgments considered
wholly at their own level and not ontologically. Judgmental cor
rectness, however its epistemic form be construed, is experientially
adequate?which is to say that it comports well with our various
ordinary practices, especially those of the natural and pure sciences
(EL, 32/75-76)?while it nevertheless remains ontologically inade
quate. Finally, the concept of "truth" which is opposed here to
mere "correctness" returns us to the idea that what judgment is
always overlooking is the relationship between ordinary things and
their Notions?that is, between things in their abstract immediacy
and in their concrete articulated totality. The Notion of a thing is
not something extra over against the thing but is the thing itself
considered in its structural fullness and total relatedness to other
things and to itself. This higher-order aspect of things is precisely
what is overlooked by the common-logical doctrine of judgment and
is therefore precisely where its ontological inadequacy lies.
Now that we have at length unpacked Hegel's criticism of com
mon-logical judgment, it is worthwhile to look briefly at Hegel's own
positive doctrine which is correlative to the critique and is indeed
negatively anticipated by it. For Hegel, the primary locus of truth
is what he calls the "category" (Gedankenbestimmung). Hegel
writes:
To ask if a category is true or not, must sound strange to the ordinary

mind: for a category apparently becomes true only when it is applied
to a given object, and apart from its application it would seem mean
ingless to inquire into its truth. But this is the very question on
which everything turns. (EL, 40-41/85)
It seems to be faithful to Hegel's doctrines to say that the category

is the judgment as taken up into the Notion, that is, the judgment
as having overcome its ontological limitations. Indeed as Hegel
was no doubt aware, the etymologies of 'category' and 'judgment'
are intimately related,12 except that the former has always been
taken to be an ontologically basic version of the latter. For Aristotle,
the categories are ultimate classes of attributes of "substance." For
Kant, the categories are the a priori concepts of the Understanding.
Hegel would agree with Aristotle and Kant on the idea that a doc
trine of categories is somehow ontologically basic, but would notice
that for both Aristotle and Kant, their categories are modelled too
closely on the common-logical doctrine of judgment. Using the ter
minology developed in this paper, we might say that Aristotle's cat
egories are too "objective" and manifest the structural flaws of
judgment; while Kant's categories are too "subjective" and manifest
the epistemic flaws of judgment. Be this as it may, what is abso
lutely clear from a Hegelian point of view is that both Aristotle's
and Kant's doctrines of categories participate in the ontological na
ivete of the common-logical doctrine of judgment.
By contrast Hegel's idea is that
the principles of logic are to be sought in a system of thought-types

or fundamental categories in which the opposition between subjective
and objective, in its usual sense, vanishes. (EL, 37/81)
Hegel's "thought-types" (Denkbestimmungen) or categories are like

Aristotle's categories in that they describe "generic traits of exis
tence"?to use Dewey's phrase?and also like Kant's categories in
that they are "forms of thought" (SL, 33/1:22). But the "generic
traits" are dynamic rather than static for Hegel, and the "forms of
thought" are by no means limited to individual human subjects.
12 This can be seen in the traditional notion of a "categorical" judg

ment, that is, an ordinary subject-predicate judgment. The Greek root of
'category', 'kategorein', seems to have had the basic meaning of making a
definite assertion or affirmative predication: most concretely, of making a
legal claim against someone in public. See H. G. Lidell and R. Scott, A
Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 927.
320 ROBERT HANNA
The categories are simply the "moments of the Notion" (SL,

28/1:38), which is to say that they express the actualized natures or
essences of things insofar as thought has manifested itself in these
things (EL, 237/323-24). Categories are "true" precisely because
they have captured these natures or essences. Thus categories play
the same role relatively to Hegel's logic that judgments play in the
common logic. Hegelian categories are, as it were, "ontologized
judgments"?where it is of course understood that the inherent on
tological limitations of judgment have been overcome in the "on
tologization."
Ill
It was noted above that all of the operations of the common

logic begin and end with judgments. This of course implies a process
or procedure of operation which takes one in a systematic way from
judgment to judgment. This process of the systematic "movement"
of the judgment is the syllogism. In his Logic Kant writes:
A syllogism is the cognition of the necessity of a proposition by sub

sumption of its condition under a given general rule. (KL, 125-551)
That is, by means of a syllogism, a logically necessary relation is

established between a single judgment and other judgments. The
single judgment results from the logical interaction of other judg
ments, and in the canonical Aristotelian case, two other judgments.
This interaction is conceived by the common logic as the specification
of a judgment (minor premise) under a general rule (major premise).
By actually running through this specification, the common logician
is able to obtain a single judgment as a conclusion. Kant says:
By concluding is to be understood that function of thought in which

one judgment is deduced from another. A conclusion in general is
thus the deduction of one judgment from another. (KL, 120/545)
Now Kant is speaking here of an "immediate" syllogism in which

the conclusion is drawn directly from a single premise. But this
single premise is typically the conjunction of the two premises of
the standard syllogism, so the normal structure of the syllogism is
implied. A judgment is thus "deduced" as a conclusion from two
other judgments which are its premises. As is well known, the
deduction is successfully carried out or "valid" so long as it cannot
be the case that when the premises are true, the conclusion is false.
Now while not all deductions are syllogisms, every syllogism properly
carried out is a deduction; the syllogism with its threefold form
traditionally stands forth as a paradigm of deduction.
As in the case of judgment, Hegel is by no means interested in
criticizing the syllogism in its ordinary functioning; he grants the
syllogism its common-logical integrity as a particular relationship
between judgments. Rather Hegel is interested in criticizing the
syllogism insofar as it betrays a certain ontological bias or naivete.
As we saw, the judgment contains an ontological limitation in its
very structure and also in the epistemic views with which it is closely
associated. A similar state of affairs holds for the syllogism. But
whereas for judgment the limitation had both a structural and an
epistemic aspect, the limitation in the syllogism is purely structural.
The structural limitation of the syllogism from an ontological
point of view displays itself in two ways. The first way has to do
with the relationship between the three judgments of the syllogism,
while the second way has to do with the dimension of truth in the
syllogism.
As for the relationship between the three judgments in the
common-logical syllogism, Hegel wants to say that the very exter
nality of these parts of the syllogistic whole is misleading for any
adequate characterization of the relationships between phenomena:
If we stop short at this form of the syllogism, then the rationality in

it, although undoubtedly present and posited, is not apparent. The
essential feature of the syllogism is the unity of extremes, the middle
term which unites them, and the ground which supports them. Ab
straction in holding rigidly to the self-subsistence of the extremes,
opposes this unity to them as a determinateness which likewise is
fixed and self-subsistent, and in this way apprehends it rather as a
non-unity than as a unity. (SL, 665/11:353)
What is crucial for Hegel here is that the common-logical syllogism

is used by the common logic and indeed by philosophical logicians
as a model for the movement of thought and thereby as a model for
the relationships between things (since even for Kant there is a
strong connection between thought and things). But the very triplex
form of the syllogism implies that such relationships can be deter
mined as merely external relationships between two "self-subsis
tent" extreme terms (i.e., the major premise and the conclusion)
322 ROBERT HANNA
and a self-subsistent middle term (the minor premise). Insofar as

each of these is presented as self-subsistent, the actual internally
related movement of thought and things is ruptured. If the major
premise is a universal judgment and the minor premise and conclu
sion are particular judgments, this seems to indicate that the uni
versal and particular are somehow related only externally.
Moreover, the form of the common-logical syllogism requires
that the middle term become a virtual barrier between the major
premise and the conclusion. Hegel writes:
The expression middle term (media terminus) is taken from spatial

representation and contributes its share to the stopping short at the
mutual externality of the terms. Now if the syllogism consists in the
unity of extremes being posited in it, and if, all the same, this unity is
simply taken on the one hand as a particular on its own, and on the
other hand as a merely external relation, and non-unity is made the
essential relationship of the syllogism, then the reason which consti
tutes the syllogism contributes nothing to rationality. (SL,
665/11:353)
The syllogism "contributes nothing to rationality" in this regard

essentially because the extremes are not united in some encom
passing third thing, but rather are externally related over against
one another through the middle term. In a word, it conceives re
lationships as the Understanding does, not as the Reason does. It
presents an obviously naive picture of mediation as requiring a third
distinct thing (tertium quid) in order to relate the two extreme terms.
But if the middle term is a distinct thing, then clearly it can be put
over against each of the extreme terms, thus requiring a new "third
thing" or middle term to relate the original middle term to each of
the extreme terms. A viciously infinite "third man" regress of re
lations is thereby engendered.
In general, the common logic suffers ontologically from having
misunderstood the interest which Reason takes in the syllogism.
What Reason is interested in is the movement of things in their
general Notional relationships; but the common logic portrays this
movement and relationship as a rigid formalism. Hegel writes:
To regard the syllogism merely as consisting of three judgments, is a

formal view that ignores the relationship of the terms on which hinges
the sole interest of the syllogism. It is altogether a merely subjective
relation of the terms into separate premisses and a conclusion distinct
from them. . . . This syllogistic process that advances by means of
separate propositions is nothing but a subjective form; the nature of
the fact is that [in] the differentiated Notion determinations of the
fact are united in the essential unity. (SL, 669/11:358)
Thus Hegel here exposes in the very idea of the common-logical

syllogism a crucial ambiguity in the way rational relationships are
conceived. It is not at all clear how the common logic can reconcile
its idea of Reason as syllogistic deduction with the traditional con
cept of Reason as the progress towards completed totalities (as Kant
would express it). For Hegel, the unnecessary limitation in the
syllogism consists in the overly great emphasis upon the bare ex
ternality of the syllogistic form as a model for Reason. Indeed Hegel
sees the syllogism of the common logic as being really a disguised
syllogism of the Understanding:
What the Formal Logic usually examines in its theory of syllogism,

is really nothing but the mere syllogism of understanding, which has
no claim to the honour of being made a form of rationality, still less
to be held as the embodiment of all reason. (EL, 245/334)
This transposition of the Understanding for the Reason, and the

consequent ontological restriction of Reason, is typical of the com
mon logic. In the Kantian case of the development of the common
logic into a propaedeutic of all philosophy, the consequence is that
even though Kant has recognized the ability of Reason to compre
hend a totality, this ability is essentially truncated and is viewed
merely as a constant approach to the infinite totality which never
actually obtains the totality.13 Thus for Kant it is as if Reason were
a common-logical syllogism with a maximally broad major premise
and an infinite number of middle terms. The very possibility of
what Hegel would call the "spurious infinity" (SL, 137/1:149) seems
to lie in the structure of the common logical syllogism owing to the
externality of its terms.
By contrast, Hegel would like to see the syllogism properly in
terpreted as anticipating the Notional fusion of universality and
particularity which issues into individuality. This would involve
seeing the "middle term" as an encompassing dynamic unity which
links the two extreme terms in a totality. Hegel even writes:
Everything is a syllogism, a universal that through particularity is

united with individuality. (SL, 669/11:359)
Clearly, Hegel is carrying out here what I have called a "re-situation"

of the common-logical terms, an insertion of the common-logical
notion back into the basic ontological structure from which it arose
13 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 308-22.
324 ROBERT HANNA
as an abstract form. Another way of saying this is to say that the

abstract Understanding presupposes concrete structures of Reason
of which it is not aware. In the case of the syllogism, Hegel is thus
able to "repatriate" the syllogism from the Understanding to the
Reason by showing that the threefold structure of the common
logical syllogism implies the threefold structure of the Notion in
general. The triad "major premise/minor premise/conclusion" can
be "mapped" back onto the Notional triad "universal/individual/
particular." Again, it should be remembered that Hegel's re-situ
ation of the term 'syllogism' is not meant to imply that henceforth
the common-logical syllogism should be regarded as somehow more
profound and powerful in a common-logical sense; he is only pro
viding an ontological commentary on the concept of a syllogism.
As regards the ontological limitation implicit in the dimension
of truth in the common-logical syllogism, Hegel notices that what
is a banality for the common-logician?namely, the syllogism's
"truth preserving" character?is of great ontological significance.
A syllogism is "valid" just in case it cannot happen that when the
premises are all true, the conclusion is false. This of course means
that when the premises are true, the conclusion must be true if the
syllogism is to remain valid. But this by no means guarantees the
truth of the conclusion just in case one of the premises is false, nor
does it guarantee the truth of the premises and conclusion. As
Hegel notices, this "truth-preserving" but not "truth-guaranteeing"
character of the syllogism means that false conclusions can be validly
drawn from a true major premise merely by using a false minor
premise:
It is justly held that there is nothing so inadequate as a formal syl
logism of this kind, since it is a matter of chance or caprice which
middle term is employed. No matter how elegantly a deduction of
this kind has run its course through syllogisms, however fully its
correctness may be conceded it still leads to nothing of the slightest
consequence, for the fact always remains that there are still other
middle terms from which the exact opposite can be deduced with equal
correctness. (SL, 671/11:361)
Now, as usual, the common-logician would yawn at such an obser

vation on Hegel's part. But it must be reemphasized that Hegel is
not attempting to disclose anything "new" to the common-logician
in point of logical fact or technique. What he is indicating is the
ontological weakness of the syllogism as regards truth?and truth
is the stated objective of all logic.
The truth of the conclusion of a syllogism is guaranteed, as we

have seen, only if the premises are also true. This casts the "burden
of truth," as it were, back upon the separate judgments of the prem
ises. But this means that, so far as syllogistic form is concerned,
each of the premises will have to be itself derived from a further
syllogism in which both premises are true. It can easily be seen
from this that an infinite regress of justificatory pro-syllogisms will
be required to guarantee the truth of any given conclusion (SL, 672
73/11:362-63). This regress in justification illustrates how the pri
mary question of truth in the common logic is forever delayed by
the very form of the syllogism. Now of course, this is a "delay"
only in an ontological sense, since as we have seen, the common logic
appeals to its own "correspondence" theory of truth for judgments.
But Hegel wants to say that it is essential to the very conceptual
structure of the common-logical syllogism that it never deals directly
with the notion of truth.
The "ontological delay" of truth in the syllogism is closely bound
up with the syllogism's character as a tool for the manipulation of
judgments. By means of the syllogistic apparatus and its various
modes and "figures," arguments may be formally "tested" for their
validity by monitoring the "distribution" of the middle term. Such
testing relies heavily on the syntactical character of the propositions
which represent judgments in the syllogisms. This partial reliance
upon syntax and the regularity of the syllogistic figures gives the
syllogism a mechanical, calculative dimension. Hegel writes:
In judgments and syllogisms the operations are in the main reduced

to and founded upon the quantitative aspect of the determinations;
consequently everything rests on an external difference, on mere com
parison and becomes a completely analytical procedure and mechanical
[begriffloses] calculation. (SL, 52/1:47)
Here it is clear that while Hegel of course has no conception of a

purely truth-functional logic, nevertheless he has anticipated the
modern development of logic as the construction of formalized lan
guages and propositional calculi. Hegel's criticism of this idea has
nothing to do with a Luddite objection to the mere fact of logical
mechanization, as if there were something inherently wrong with
formalization and mathematization. Rather Hegel is concerned only
with the illegitimate extension of such structures into ontological
realms where they do not belong, namely the realms of organic re
lationships, dynamic process, and concrete truth.
326 ROBERT HANNA
In this regard, Hegel refers to Leibniz's idea of a "charctcteristica

universalis"or what would now be more commonly called an "ideal
language":
The extreme example of this irrational treatment of the Notion de

terminations of the syllogism is surely Leibniz's subjection of the
syllogism to the calculus of combinations and permutations . . . Con
nected with this was a pet idea of Leibniz, embraced by him in his
youth, and in spite of its immaturity and shallowness not relinquished
by him even in later life, the idea of a characteristica universalis of
Notions?a language of symbols in which each Notion would be rep
resented as a relation proceeding from others or in relation to others?
as though in rational combinations, which is essentially dialectical, a
content still retained the same determinations that it possesses when
fixed in isolation (SL, 684/11:378-379)
It is the last sentence of this quotation which is crucial for Hegel's

critique of the ontological bias of the syllogism conceived as a char
acteristica universalis. The error of an "ideal language" which is
conceived as a calculus is the ontological error of imposing a model
which functions in a mechanical sense onto a content which functions
not in a mechanical sense but in an organic and teleological sense.
The Notion for Hegel is among other things the self-development
of a phenomenon from potentiality to actuality. Notional truth lies
in the completeness or perfection of this self-development (EL, 237/
323-24). The Notion is also the principle of organic totality whereby
a whole and its parts are internally related. The mechanical and
quantitative structural aspects of the syllogism conceived as a char
acteristica universalis cannot capture the organic and irreducibly
qualitative aspects of the Notion. The proposed "ideal language"
therefore fails as "ideal" because it cannot adequately describe large
ontological domains.
In light of the critique of the syllogism, Hegel can again antic
ipate an aspect of his speculative logic. We saw above that in the
critique of the common-logical judgment ontological limitations were
exposed which called out for an ontologically adequate correlative
of judgment?this was the "category" in the Hegelian sense. Sim
ilarly in the case of the syllogism, the critique has revealed an on
tological lack in the syllogism, namely its externalism, formalism,
"delay" of truth, and "calculative" character. This lack of course
tends to call out what is lacking, which as we saw was an idea of
Reason developing its Notion in an internalistic, material, truthful,
and organic way. For Hegel, the ontological correlative of the com
mon-logical syllogism is the idea of a "system" in which the phe

nomena display their rationality by means of internal, articulated,
organic connection. The system, for Hegel, is the ultimately ade
quate locus of truth (as opposed to correctness):
Truth, then, is only possible as a universe or totality of thought; and

the freedom of the whole, as well as the necessity of the several sub
divisions, which it implies, are only possible when these are discrim
inated and defined.
Unless it is a system, a philosophy is not a scientific production.
(EL, 20/59-60)
Such a speculative-logical system is constructed of categories in a

way partially analogous to that in which the syllogism is built out
of judgments. But a system in Hegel's sense does not merely "pre
serve" the truth of categories; rather it guarantees their truth. This
is because, unlike the syllogism, the categorial "parts" anticipate
the systematic whole (the Notion or Idea) and the systematic whole
is manifested in every one of the categorial parts. In short, for
Hegel the speculative-logical system reproduces in essence the
structure of organic totalities and therefore overcomes the ontolog
ical inadequacy of any "ideal language."
IV
By having first developed Hegel's critique of the common logic

with respect to judgment and the syllogism, I hope to have prepared
a climate of receptivity for that b?te-noire of Hegel's doctrine, his
critique of common-logical contradiction. Russell's cheeky remarks
in "On Denoting" implying the absurdity of Hegel's "denial" of the
principle of non-contradiction14 have long stood in the way of a
fruitful understanding of Hegel's logic. But as we have seen, Hegel's
account provides a critique of the common logic from an ontological
point of view alone, and is by no means a "denial" of any principle
of the common logic. This goes as much for contradiction as it does
for judgment and the syllogism. Thus Hegel escapes the charge of
absurdity by having a wholly different critical project in mind than
the one Russell implicitly attributes to him.
14 B. Russell, "On Denoting," in Essays in Analysis (New York: George

Braziller, 1973), p. 110.
328 ROBERT HANNA
In order to understand Hegel's critique of the common-logical

concept of contradiction, however, a few preliminary historical re
marks are absolutely necessary. For there is a troublesome distor
tion regarding Hegel's critique of contradiction which stems merely
from the development of the science of common logic between Kant's
day and the modern period. For the modern common logic, (1) ne
gation is an operation applied only to propositions (or more accu
rately, to sentences of the formal language?formulas not containing
free variables?where 'sentence' means in addition to simple sen
tences, also conjunctions, disjunctions, negates, and conditionali
zations of sentences) and results in the reversal of the truth-value
of that proposition; (2) contradiction is a conjunction of a proposition
and its negate; (3) the theory of identity is regarded as being separate
from the central subject-matter of common logic.15
But for the common logic of Kant's day, the concepts of identity
and of contradiction are closely connected. In his Logic, Kant in
cludes as the first of the "three principles of universal, merely formal
or logical criteria of truth":
1) the principle of contradiction and identity (principium contradic

tionis and identitatis), by which the inner possibility of a cognition is
determined for problematic judgments. (KL, 58/479)
Hegel also accepts this basic unity of the concepts of contradiction

and identity:
The other expression of the law of identity: A cannot at the same time
be A and not-A, has a negative form; it is called the law of contradiction
(SL, 416/11:45)
Now what is important about this assimilation of identity and con

tradiction for my purposes is the idea that contradiction may apply
equally to things and to propositions. For identity is explicitly a
relationship between things (or between a thing and itself), and on
this view if a thing is non-self-identical, it is contradictory. Thus
it follows that for Kant's and Hegel's common logic, negation can
be construed as an operation either upon propositions (or judgments)
15 See William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic

(Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 742.
or as an operation upon things insofar as they are non-identical

with other things.
Quite independently, then, of the logical correctness of this as
similation of contradiction and identity, it must be understood that
Hegel (just as does Kant) assumes this to be the case, and his entire
critique of the common-logical concept of contradiction presupposes
it. It is therefore wrong-headed or at least in interpretive bad faith
to criticize Hegel for "muddling" the principle of non-contradiction
by applying it indifferently to things and propositions (or judg
ments), when it is explicitly part of Hegel's critical method to assume
that the common logic must be analyzed as it stands and not be
intrinsically disturbed by his analysis.
Having said this, we can now turn back to Hegel's account of
common-logical contradiction. It should be clear by now that He
gel's critique of common-logical contradiction cannot be wholly split
off from his treatments of identity and negation, since the common
logic posits an intimate relationship between these three notions.
In particular, it can be said that in the common logic, contradiction
is construed as the negation of self-identity, where "identity" can
be taken to encompass both things and propositions (or we might
simply say that propositions are a special sub-class of things). Thus
in order to criticize the common-logical notion of contradiction, we
must first turn to Hegel's critique of the common-logical notions of
identity and negation.
Hegel formulates the common-logical law of identity in the fol
lowing way:
Thus the essential category of identity is enunciated in the proposition:

everything is identical with itself, A = A. (SL, 409/11:36)
Now Hegel's criticism of common-logical identity really has two

parts, one of which is concerned with the "material" aspect of the
general law 'A = A' and the other of which is concerned with its
purely "formal" aspect. The material aspect of the law of identity
is that it asserts an absolute identity between a thing and itself
(which I shall call "simple identity"), or between two things (which
I shall call "complex identity") in such a way that no difference
whatsoever between the things is possible. This abstraction from
all possible difference is what Hegel calls the "abstract Identity of
Understanding" (EL, 166/237). It is "abstract" precisely because
of the abstraction from all difference. As J. N. Findlay puts it:
330 ROBERT HANNA
On the degenerate interpretation [i.e., the interpretation held by the

common logic] the Law of Identity merely bids us identify objects
referred to by means of one term or concept with objects referred to
by the same term or concept.16
Thus identification occurs merely through the criterion of sameness

alone. And yet the very fact of the repeatability of the second term
in simple identity ('A = A') and the bringing-forward of the distinct
second term in complex identity ('A = B') seems to presuppose the
dimension of difference. For in simple identity, repetition is still
different from the mere presence of an object, and the relation a
thing bears to itself is still different from its mere existence; and in
complex identity the mere presence of a second thing (or on the
Fregean interpretation, a second name with a distinct sense but the
same denotation) is sufficient to indicate at least a prima facie dif
ference (even if only a difference in the Fregean sense) from the
first thing, despite their identity. Hegel objects therefore not to
the bare idea that a thing is identical to itself, or that two things
can be identical to one another (or put in a Fregean way, that there
is but one thing, referred to by two different names), but rather to
the covert ontological assumption that identity can be "pure" in the
sense of excluding all difference.
Hegel then goes on to give an account of how it is that the
common logic thinks itself able to propose a "pure" law of identity.
He writes:
This Identity becomes an Identity, in form only, or of the understand
ing, if it be held hard and fast, quite aloof from difference. Or, rather,
abstraction is the imposition of this Identity of form, the transfor
mation of something inherently concrete into this form of elementary
simplicity. And this may be done in two ways. Either we may neglect
a part of the multiple features which are found in the concrete thing
(by what is called analysis) and select only one of them; or, neglecting
their variety, we may concentrate the multiple characters into one.
(EL, 166/237)
In short, the crucial thing about common-logical identity is that it

utilizes a principle of abstraction without explicitly admitting to it.
In this abstraction it either neglects the variety of features of things
in favor of one particular feature which it then fixates upon and
16 J. N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination (London: George Allen and

Unwin Ltd., 1958), pp. 189-90.
calls "identical" across implicitly suppressed differences; or it over

looks the jyrima facie differences between the features of a thing
and collapses them into a single homogeneous feature which is then
held to be "identical" with another similarly reduced class of
features.
The "formal" aspect of the common-logical notion of the law of
identity is that it presents itself as formally or logically necessary,
or as Hegel puts it:
This proposition in its positive expression A = A is in the first instance,

nothing more than the expression of an empty tautology. (SL,
413/11:41)
That is, the common logic wants to put the principle of identity
forward as necessary purely in virtue of its logical form alone, or
as the contemporary terminology would have it, as necessary owing
to its "analyticity." But Hegel is suspicious about the analyticity
or tautologousness of the law of identity, because he holds that the
very form of the proposition in which an identity is expressed is
sufficient to imply the non-analyticity or "syntheticity" of the prop
osition. He writes:
In the form of the proposition, therefore, in which identity is expressed,

there lies more than simple, abstract identity; in it, there lies this
pure movement of reflection in which the other appears only as illusory
being, as an immediate vanishing; A is, is a beginning that hints at
something different to which an advance is to be made; but this dif
ferent something does not materialize; A is?A; the difference is only
a vanishing; the movement returns into itself. The propositional form
can be regarded as the hidden necessity of adding to abstract identity
the more of that movement. (SL, 415-16/11:44)
Thus the common logic has not realized that there is something
"built into" the very form of the proposition which prevents the law
of identity from being a mere tautology or analytic proposition. This
"built-in" component is the bipartite subject/predicate structure
of the proposition which requires that something distinct from the
subject-term be applied to the subject in the predicate-term. Hence
the ontological structure of difference is implicit in the very syntax
of the proposition. Hegel of course recognizes that there are dif
ferences between the existential, veridical, predicative, and identi
fying uses of 'is'; but he is well aware that these uses are not on
tologically so split off from one another as the common-logician
supposes. In this way Hegel is able to say that the syntactical
332 ROBERT HANNA
structure of predication is implicit in every identifying use of 'is'

(or its symbolic correlative '='). This makes every superficially "an
alytic" statement of identity into a "synthetic" statement at a deeper
level. Hegel writes:
From this it is evident that the law of identity itself, and still more
the law of contradiction, is not merely of analytic but of synthetic
nature. For the latter contains in its expression not merely empty,
simple equality-with-self, and not merely the other of this in general,
but, what is more, absolute inequality, contradiction per se. But as
has been shown, the law of identity itself contains the movement of
reflection, identity as a vanishing of otherness. (SL, 416/11:45)
For 'contradiction' in the above quotation, read 'internal self-op

position'; I will deal with Hegel's own notion of contradiction below.
At present, it is necessary only to see that Hegel has detected within
the very form of the principle of identity a structural characteristic
which opposes the apparent "pure" analyticity of identity.17
Hegel's critique of the common-logical negation has to some
extent been anticipated by the account I have just given of identity.
For Hegel, the contrary of sameness is difference, and an obvious
parallelism arises from his critique of identity: just as there can be
no "pure" identity such that one can have sameness quite apart
from difference, so there is no "pure" negation such that one can
have difference quite apart from sameness. Another way of saying
this is that for Hegel negation is never mere difference without
some implicit determinate content or sameness.18
The common logic, however, puts its doctrine of negation for
ward in such a way as to suggest that negation is something quite
apart from any "ontic commitment" or sameness. The common
logic views negation as an "indifferent difference" which can be ap
plied to things or propositions. In order to capture the important
distinction between the negation which implies determinate things
and the negation of the common logic which is an "indifferent dif
17 It is obvious that Hegel's critique of the analyticity of identity has

important parallels with Quine's famous attack on the analytic/synthetic
distinction in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" in From a Logical Point of
View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 20-46. But Hegel's
critique goes far deeper than Quine's in that it demonstrates the synthet
icity of even logical analyticity. This raises ontological problems about
logic itself, a line of questioning which Quine never pursues.
18 See G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 36, 51.
ference," Hegel proposes a distinction between "difference" (Unter

schied) and "diversity" (Verschiedenheit). Here we can see that
Hegel's critique of common-logical negation consists in the re-sit
uation of the abstract common-logical doctrine into a more concrete
ontological doctrine of negation as "difference." Of difference Hegel
writes:
That which is different from difference is identity. [For 'identity' is
this quotation, read 'sameness' in order to correspond to the termi
nology of this essay; unfortunately, Hegel uses the same term 'identity'
to refer to abstract common-logical identity and concrete ontological
sameness.] Difference is therefore itself and identity. Both together
constitute difference; it is the whole, and its moment. It can equally
be said that difference, as simple, is no difference; it is there only when
it is in relation with identity; but the truth is rather that, as difference,
it contains equally identity and this relation itself. (SL, 417/11:47)
And of diversity, Hegel writes that
in diversity, as the indifference of difference, reflection has become,

in general, external to itself. (SL, 419/11:48)
Whereas difference determinately refers to things in their concrete

ness, diversity at best indeterminately refers to them. Whereas
difference has an internal relatedness to things it operates upon,
diversity has only an external relatedness.
'Diversity' is for Hegel an ontological term which refers to the
negation which is utilized by the common logic. Where common
logical negation is to be criticized is not in the fact that it is used
in assertions of non-identity or in negates of propositions, but rather
in the fact that it does not recognize itself to be only "diversity"
and not "difference." Put differently, negation in the common-log
ical sense puts itself forward as ontologically basic, but is in fact
an abstract, static concept which in its indifference to the things it
negates, ontologically distorts the actual concrete relations of dif
ference which things have to one another. Thus for Hegel diversity
is not "wrong" but is rather ontologically limited. To take diversity
as exhaustive of the whole idea of the negative is simply to cover
over an entire region of reality named by 'difference'. Of this on
tological region Hegel writes:
All that is necessary to achieve scientific progress?and it is essential

to strive to gain this quite simple insight?is the recognition of the
[speculative] logical principle that the negative is just as much positive,
or that what is self-contradictory does not resolve itself into a nullity,
into abstract nothingness, but essentially only into the negation of
334 ROBERT HANNA
its particular content, in other words, that such a negation is not all
and every negation but the negation of a specific subject matter which
resolves itself, and consequently is a specific negation, and therefore
the result essentially contains that from which it results.
(SL, 54/1:49)
The essential aspect of difference for Hegel is that it consists in an

active rejection of a determinate content; thus the "negative is just
as much positive." What this means is that things are to be con
strued for Hegel in their sameness with themselves only because
they positively exclude other things, and define themselves as against
those other things.
This concrete dimension of the negative is also inherently active
because when a thing changes or moves it does so obviously by not
being what it was, or by striving to be what it currently is-not.
Thus Hegel can speak of difference as the "inner negativity of the
determinations [of the Understanding] as their self-moving soul,
the principle of all natural and spiritual life" (SL, 56/1:52). We are
verging here upon an essential aspect of Hegel's own speculative
logic, the aspect of dialectical negativity. In an adequate account
of this, much would need to be said about negativity or difference
as the motor of the dialectic, and about the inherent tendency of
the Understanding to give rise to this dialectical dynamism. For
the present purposes, however, all we need notice is that common
logical negation implicitly avoids the concreteness and dynamism
of difference by its ontological bias towards "indifferent difference."
The awareness of this avoidance is sufficient for Hegel's critique of
common-logical negation as ontologically limited.
We now have the materials for an adequate discussion of Hegel's
critique of the common-logical notion of contradiction. Insofar as
the common logic defines contradiction in terms of common-logical
identity and negation, it will presuppose whatever the latter pre
suppose. We have seen that common-logical identity is ontologically
biased in its claim to be "pure" and to be analytic. We have also
seen that common-logical negation is abstract and avoids the con
crete dimension of difference. Consequently, common-logical con
tradiction will be ontologically biased in its "purity" and analyticity,
and will also avoid the concrete ontological region of difference.
Here we can see that the law of non-contradiction will continue to
work undisturbed in the logical practices of the common logic. He
gel's critique does not make logical contradictions such as 'Socrates
is mortal and it is not the case that Socrates is mortal' into non
contradictions. All Hegel is doing is to point out that common

logical contradiction is as it were only the very most abstract tip of
an ontological iceberg and therefore must not be taken to stand in
for the whole iceberg.
Hegel's critique of common-logical contradiction centers on the
fact that in the common logic contradiction is presented in an overly
abstract way. For the common logic, a contradiction is a necessary
falsehood, whether by non-self-identity or by the conjunction of a
proposition and its negate. But this leaves the terms of the con
tradiction in a merely external relationship to one another. As He
gel puts it, in the common logic contradiction
remains an external reflection which passes from likeness to unlike

ness, or from the negative relation to the reflection-into-itself, of the
distinct sides. It holds these two determinations over against one
another and has in mind only them, but not their transition, which is
the essential point and which contains the contradiction. (SL, 441/
11:77-78)
In short, the two terms of the common-logical contradiction face

one another as merely exclusive. There is no sense of the "transi
tion" between the two terms which would show why the two terms
are in fact mutually incompatible. This of course has no impact
upon the common-logical contradiction in its propositional form,
but it does seem to imply that the things referred to by the common
logical judgment will be as externally related as the terms in the
proposition. Here again we see the implicit translation of syntact
ical form into ontological structure. To make the law of non-con
tradiction ontologically basic (as in Aristotle) is to impose an on
tologically biased structure upon the world. As Hegel will show,
when two aspects of a phenomenon mutually exclude one another
within the same phenomenon, they do so because of some internal
characteristic of one aspect which cannot "tolerate" some internal
characteristic of the other aspect. Common logical contradiction is
a formal, externalized expression of this ontological reflexive intol
erance or internal self-resistance, not the reason for it. Thus com
mon-logical contradiction replicates at best the mere form of a more
concrete relationship arising within a single phenomenon, and can
not be said to be basic to that phenomenon.
By contrast, then, in his usual move of ontological re-situation,
Hegel can state his own ontologically more adequate account of con
tradiction:
336 ROBERT HANNA
The self-subsistent determination of reflection that contains the op

posite determination, and is self-subsistent in virtue of this inclusion,
at the same time also excludes it; in its self-subsistence, therefore, it
excludes from itself its own self-subsistence. For this consists in
containing within itself its opposite determination?through which
alone it is not a relation to something external?but no less imme
diately in the fact that it is itself, and also excludes from itself the
determination that is negative to it. It is thus contradiction. (SL,
431/11:65)
Since the re-situated idea of contradiction is central to Hegel's spec

ulative logic, it is worth paraphrasing what he is saying here. In a
nutshell, Hegel is saying that when a phenomenon excludes itself
by virtue of what it includes, and includes itself by virtue of what
it excludes, it is "contradictory" in Hegel's sense. That is: a phe
nomenon is contradictory when the very conditions of its own ex
istence necessitate its own non-existence, but the conditions of its
non-existence are sufficient to provide its existence.
Thus it can be seen that for Hegel a contradiction?or as
G. R. G. Mure calls it, a "dialectical contradiction" in contradis
tinction from common-logical contradiction19?is not merely a nec
essary falsity, but rather involves the internally destructive char
acter of a thing whereby it continually posits and negates itself. As
Hegel puts it in the Phenomenology of Spirit:
We have to think . . . antithesis within the antithesis itself, or con
tradiction. For in the difference which is an inner difference, the
opposite is not merely one of two?if it were, it would simply be, without
being an opposite?but it is the opposite of an opposite, or the other
is itself immediately present in it.20
This is what I referred to above as "ontological intolerance" or "self
resistance." Hegel's dialectical contradiction, as J. N. Findlay has
noticed,21 is very close in certain ways to what modern logicians call
a "paradox" or an "antinomy." What is important about such par
adoxes and antinomies is not that they generate a particularly vi
cious form of truth-functional inconsistency (indeed, only some of
the antinomies are truth-functional) but that they undo themselves
by means of the very same functions and conditions by which they
establish themselves. As Quine has pointed out, such paradoxes
and antinomies are at the limits of logical comprehension, and yet
19 G. R. G. Mure, A Study of Hegel's Logic, p. 302.

20 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 99.
21 J. N. Findlay, "The Contemporary Relevance of Hegel," in Language,
Mind and Value (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1963), pp. 221-22.
are somehow basic to logic.22 In a very similar way, the Hegelian

contradiction is a notion which confounds the logic of the Under
standing and yet from the standpoint of Reason is ontologically
basic. For as Hegel points out, "everything is inherently contra
dictory" (SL, 439/11:74). This is far from being the ridiculous claim
that it seems to be, for it is only saying that everything is a com
plementary blend of sameness and difference, and both posits and
negates itself in its every activity.
A final difference between dialectical contradiction and com
mon-logical contradiction brings forward the "dialectical" dimension
of Hegel's speculative logic. Whereas common-logical contradiction
is static and "linear" (in Bosanquet's sense23), dialectical contradic
tion is dynamic and developmental. It is dynamic and developmental
because for Hegel all motion and process, interpreted ontologically,
contain within themselves an essential aspect of internal negativity
or difference. In this light, dialectical contradiction is seen as the
most acute form of difference?a kind of boiling-point of difference,
as it were. This "boiling-point" erupts into activity when the neg
ativity is sufficiently involuted. Hegel writes:
Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only insofar

as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge
and activity. (SL, 439/11:75)
What Hegel means is that contradiction is not only the reflexive

intolerance of things, but is also intolerable for things, and that a
new level or state of development will be forced into existence
through the pressure of dialectical contradiction. Such development
is for Hegel a "dialectical" development.
This aspect of contradiction may seem intolerably metaphorical;
and indeed from a restricted common-logical point of view it is vague
and unsatisfactory. But ontologically speaking, Hegel's doctrine of
contradiction points to that aspect of things which we all recognize
in our struggles with conceptual knots and which we also recognize
in the irreducible phenomena of conflict and crisis in the process of
development of organic nature. Therefore insofar as Hegelian con
tradiction at least gives us a way of talking about these things, the
22 W. V. O. Quine, "The Ways of Paradox," in The Ways of Paradox

and Other Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 1-18.
23 See B. Bosanquet, Implication and Linear Inference (New York:
Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1920).
338 ROBERT HANNA
ontological adequacy of Hegel's account is not impaired by criticism

based on the ontological "clarity" of any ontology based on the com
mon logic. Such ontologies cannot even begin to speak of such things:
"what we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence."24
From the perspective of Hegel's critique of the common logic,

we can now see Hegel's own logic as the attempt to establish an
ontological logic over and above the common logic. This involves
the resuscitation of ontological structures which have been narrowed
or even positively distorted by the common logic. This supposes
that the common logic is not "ontologically neutral" but is rather
in fact ontologically biased insofar as it implicitly treats of things
from the standpoint of the Understanding as opposed to that of
Reason. In the process of his critique, Hegel has re-situated the
concepts of judgment, syllogism, and contradiction back into his
own speculative logic, and has thereby prepared places for his on
tological doctrines of categories, system, and dialectic, respectively.
What is perhaps more important, however, than Hegel's re
situation of common-logical concepts or his anticipation of his own
ontological doctrines, is his critical conservatism with respect to the
common logic. This allows him to expose the ontological bias of the
common logic and hence remove its suitability for translation into
ontology, without thereby disturbing the common logic in itself.
Thus the Hegelian logic is not a competitor of the common logic?
not some grandiose "alternative logic"?but is rather the result of
a more adequate ontological reflection upon the common logic.25
New Haven, Connecticut
24 L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears

and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), p. 151.
For an account of what Hegelian logic can say about just those things
which "logical atomism" must pass over in silence, see E. Harris, An In
terpretation of the Logic of Hegel (Lanham: University Press of America,
1983), especially pp. 8, 39, 62,126, 311-19.
25 I would like to thank John E. Smith for his helpful comments on
an earlier version of this essay.

Hegel's Critique of The Common Logic

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From an Ontological Point of View: Hegel's Critique of the Common Logic

Author(s): Robert Hanna

JjLegel'S logic, as developed both in the Science of Logic1 and in

1 G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (London: George

Review of Metaphysics 40 (December 1986): 305-338. Copyright ? 1986 by the Review of

festly goes far beyond the scope of the common logic; it is by no

Logic?as common logic?is an ontologically undeveloped and

calls "analytic general logic")5 into a "transcendental logic," and

5 I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. K. Smith (London: Mac

development of the content provided for it by common logic. We

the conceptions on which the [common] Notion of logic has rested

It is comments like these, I am sure, which have always misled in

scientific disciplines (SL, 58/1:54). As such its procedures and no

the purpose of the science [of common logic] is to become acquainted

But viewed from a higher viewpoint, namely that of ontology, the

discourse of common logic was an abstract, partial, and specifically

7 Heidegger's ontological account of logic may be found mainly in Being

It seems necessary to begin with Hegel's critique of the common

itation which is "built into" judgment merely owing to its "propo

Judgment is the comparison of a thing with some mark [or attribute].

This brings forward the "structural" element of the common-logical

8 J. L. Austin, "Truth," in Philosophical Papers (Oxford: At the Clar

Hegel points out in this regard that the etymology of 'Urteil'

Attribution is no more than an external reflection about the object:

What Hegel means by "external reflection" is the idea that a certain

its "profiles." Rather it is because there is an ontological difference

The propositional form (and for proposition it would be more correct

The judgment is not suited to express the concrete because the

The predicate, as the phrase is, inheres in the subject. Further, as

The subject is a source or ground of the predicate in the sense that

the predicate as universal is self-subsistent, and indifferent whether

In this way, the concrete whole of the subject becomes a particular

With respect to judgment in particular, the Notion is the implicit,

11 John Smith, "The Logic of Hegel Revisited: A Review of Errol E.

should not be taken to be a denial or discrediting of judgment, but

A judgment is a presentation {Vorstellung] of the unity of the con

Thus Kant is saying that a judgment is a representation of the unity

In short, then, a certain epistemic view is implied by the common

The object is regarded as something complete and finished on its own

The doctrine is "controversial" for Hegel not because it implies the

logic of understanding . . . believes thought to be a mere subjective

For Hegel, thought is thought of objects, and objects become "ob

quite independently of any epistemic difficulties which a "corre

To ask if a category is true or not, must sound strange to the ordinary

It seems to be faithful to Hegel's doctrines to say that the category

the principles of logic are to be sought in a system of thought-types

Hegel's "thought-types" (Denkbestimmungen) or categories are like

12 This can be seen in the traditional notion of a "categorical" judg

The categories are simply the "moments of the Notion" (SL,

It was noted above that all of the operations of the common

A syllogism is the cognition of the necessity of a proposition by sub

That is, by means of a syllogism, a logically necessary relation is

By concluding is to be understood that function of thought in which

Now Kant is speaking here of an "immediate" syllogism in which

If we stop short at this form of the syllogism, then the rationality in

What is crucial for Hegel here is that the common-logical syllogism

and a self-subsistent middle term (the minor premise). Insofar as

The expression middle term (media terminus) is taken from spatial

The syllogism "contributes nothing to rationality" in this regard

To regard the syllogism merely as consisting of three judgments, is a

Thus Hegel here exposes in the very idea of the common-logical

What the Formal Logic usually examines in its theory of syllogism,

This transposition of the Understanding for the Reason, and the